Re:Restrictions reduce its value to consumers
on
Piracy and the PSP
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· Score: 1
It's a great little device. I'd use it a lot more if I could use SCUMM or other emulation. (I know I can, but I can't be bothered to get the things set up).
Exactly... I never bothered setting it up for piracy/emulation purposes either. I have 7 or 8 games, legally bought... Played them for hours.
Alas, my PSP was involved in an accident with a liquid and doesn't work anymore. I still haven't replaced it, and hope it will be one day < 100€ so that I can play the games I have again. For the moment, I just wait....
A bit offtopic, but... Indeed... I never got that people had problem with SCSI termination. I found PATA much more complicated. Master/Slave? Huh? With SCSI it's dead-simple. Just consider it a tube, and it needs to be closed on both sides or water will come out... *grin*
Yes, and? It's not as if I didn't actually know that. There are also BMW X-series (Not X5, or X3... you can get a 320X for example), Subaru has a few. I just listed those I am familiar with.
oh man sign me up. The only way you could make that any more attractive is to make it all wheel drive.
Audi A3 Quattro, Audi TT Quattro, VW Golf 4motion, Seat Leon 4, Skoda Felicia 4x4
Yes, I now those are all Haldex systems and not permanent all wheel drive, but I have one of the cars mentioned above and it works perfectly fine on snow. Where SUVs give in, I pass...
Now, not talking about modern cars, but when I was in Tuscany last year, the Panda 4x4 was still ubiquitous.
Muscle mass as in body builders who have lots of muscles but no strength? I can understand the sentiment, but I was talking about a healthy lifestyle, not about looks.
No.... He said said that computers deteriorate.. The original post din't even mention transistors:
you just can't admit it to yourself. No CPU, RAM, harddrive, etc etc etc is going to run as well as it did after four years
So if you state such a thing it must deteriorate in a measurable way for the end-user. That isn't exactly true. A component that starts to get flaky is by definition already defective. You get random crashes? You investigate. A computer component no working within specs is broken.
I'm not contesting transistors deteriorate, but I am contesting that this has a real effect on the end-user experience. I have several consumer-end computer over 7 years old that work perfectly fine. That 24/7.... 7 years is pretty much "old" for a computer, even for Macs (from which this discussion originated) Sure, if the transistor decay makes my hardware unusable in 45 years... does it really matter?
It simply is not the same as saying "computers deteriorate". If this had any real effect at all (except for dying components) this stuff would be published all over the place. It simply is not relevant for the end-user.
Oh, I know the Thalys.... I've already taken the Eurostar, TGV-Est, etc... It's all the TGV, unless you're in Germany where I did take the ICE (which is great too)
I'm not saying anything you didn't say. I was just saying that the case Amsterdam-Marseilles isn't realistic. My main point for talking about that line is to give a perspective to the US readers. They always think that everything here is close together. I mean, eveyone knows Paris is next to Amsterdam, right?
Brussels - Paris is not something an American thinks of as far. They'd that to go watch a movie... For the record: for me Paris still is 2h30, but that's because I don't live in Brussels. Look up TGV Est;-) Before the TGV it was 5 hours train or so...
Well, that's pretty much what I thought. It simply breaks. That's fine with me, but the person actually asserted that the hardware became slower and that was highly suspicious to me.
What are the timeframes of this happening? Within the lifespan of a typical computer? That a 10 year old computer eventually fails is to be expected. Now, a 1 year old failing due to degradation would be a outrage.
Then again, what about Chicago? They are a major city and central to the rail systems that already exist.
Geographically it would make most sense to connect it to the east-coast network. I checked: NY to Chicago is about 1300km. That's pretty much the same as Amsterdam to Marseilles (You'd have to take two TGVs to do that because Paris is the centre of everything "TGV", but you can do it...) Amsterdam to Marseilles would take 8 hours, so at that point I'd rather advocate taking the plane. Perhaps Chicago/Philly/NY makes more sense?
No one wants the noise, diesel fumes, or danger that comes with having train traffic in their neighborhood.
Yes, the not-in-my-backyard phenomenon. I actually live close to a railroad trackand it really isn't as bad as you make it out to be. That said, most trains here are electric (but I wouldn't know for freight trains...) I wonder what danger.... I'd expect the tracks to be fenced off in populated areas, just like highways are fenced off. (At least, here they are...)
However the NIBY problem arises here too. I live in the region that is serviced by the TGV Est and the track was replanned several times because of this. I do have to admit that getting to Paris in pretty much 2h30 is an insane luxury. If I'm inclined to, I could leave at 8h00 and have a coffee at the Champs Elyées at 11h00, then have lunch at a Bistro, go shop a bit a Galleries Lafayette and be home in time for dinner. *grin*
just that it seems to be virtually impossible to have even a mediocre rail system, freight or commuter, in the US.
That's what I can pretty much interpret from the comments around here. I think that political will has to be shown and actually "just do it" and not look at the financial aspects too early. The system doesn't have to make money, it just has to be able to sustain itself. However, that's too "socialist" and would be political suicide if a politician would stand behind it.
I have taken that train.... It takes quite long to load and unload and probably is quite a logistic challenge. The reason they do this is because they don't want people driving in th Eurotunnel.... So it's trains-only.
Madrid train bombings? We still can board trains free of checks....
Well, there is one exception to that: the only place where I've been checked when boarding a train was in Brussels and London when I took the Eurostar. I can somehow understand that, because if some smartass does detonate something within the Eurotunnel it's not going to be pretty.
Oh, you're not being a dick. My problem was not with the assertion that your cities are far apart and I most certainly wouldn't advocate a a train connection between LA and NY. Taking the plane for such things is absolutely acceptable and I wouldn't even think of saying that a Faro-Helsinki traveller should take the train.
My problem is that I always hear that "the US is frigging huge" and do as if Europe isn't much larger than a medium sized of your states. It isn't, Europe is also large. About the cities: yes... they're pretty close in the middle if you only think of places like Paris, London, Brussels, Amsterdam. However, if you start taking into account places like Warsaw, Vienna... heck even Rome isn't very close. I would consider Seattle close to LA, but it's exactly in the same ballpark as London to Vienna.
The geographical topology of the US is radically different from Europe (You're pretty much a big landmass, and you can look at Europe as a kind of large peninsula)
What would make sense, however, is developing a rail system to interconnect the large cities on the west coat, and another one on the east coast. Make sure that airports are directly connected to these two train networks and you have the benefits of high speed inter-city train connections and the benefits of air travel for large distances.
Once you get to the 'city', how do you get to/from your work site?
Actually, you're going to laugh, but my former job pretty much was next to a railroad station. From my home it's a 10-15min walk to the train station. It was actually faster than taking the car. My current job is similar, but it's with buses: a bus stop is at 2 minutes from my home and oddly there is a bus stop at 2 minutes from my office. Frequency of buses is every 20minutes, frequency of trains every hour (more in peaks)
So, yes, usually it's just walking + bus/train.
The sweating is greatly reduced because you're actually doing the walking every day and you're getting used to it. Now granted, I don't work in a suit which would indeed be more uncomfortable. In high summer, I just wear a tshirt (and pants, I promise, I wear pants *grin*). Besides, nobody actually prevents you from taking a fresh tshirt (which is what I did when I occasionally biked to work)
The thing is, where I live (Europe), if you live pretty close to the closest city, you usually have good connections by bus or train. The buses often even have their own lanes and get faster through morning/evening traffic because of that. If you live in a small village, it gets harder but it is possible. Most small villages have a bus going through it at the typical worktimes. A couple in the morning, a couple in the evening. Another alternative for many people is to drive to the closest train station and take the train to the city. The parking next to the train stations are free and you burn less gas. Parking in the city is expensive (think 10€/day if you're lucky, but I don't know for sure, I haven't paid for parking for a whole day in ages)
What if you need to go to the gym or shop after work on the way home?? How do you live like that without a car.
You go to a gym/shop on the route between your work and home? Besides, if you actually do the walking, you won't need a gym. The trick with going grocery shopping is simple: take one large bag and buy foodstuff for one or two days. The shopping frequency is greater, but your shopping time is reduced (you need few things) and you eat fresher fruits/vegetables. Also, instead of just going to a big mall, you stop at the local butcher, the local bakery... all by foot.
It is entirely possible... Hey, I even have a supermarket reachable by foot... There are even sidewalks *grin* and the bus stops pretty much in front of it. So, going home, I get off a few bus stops earlier, do my shopping and walk home.
The thing is that you have to start thinking differently: if you take the car, the world revolves around your schedule. That is not true anymore when you take public transportation: Instead, you need to plan a bit more carefully. Your workday, really becomes an 8h workday because, hey, you're going to miss the bus if you're still there late. The other aspect is that the infrastructure must be there (and it isn't in most of the US). I think the two are linked, because the US way of life/thinking is very "ego-centered" and this means your own transportation, and hence public transportation is seen as something undesirable and is thus not funded.
How long do you think it will be before they are able to do a full system like this. Or at least the brain, eyes, lungs, and heart. That would be amazing!
Not too long ago I saw a documentary on Robert J. White and related "experiments". I don't know if it was him or one of the Russians with similar projects, but they actually kept a monkey brain alive outside the head. Yes, there was video footage...
Let's compare this a bit. According to Google maps NYC to WDC is 365km. I wanted something close in the TGV network, so Paris to Metz seems to fit quite nicely with 332km.
According to tgv.fr, I can get the trip Paris Metz for a bit less than 60€. I does only take 1h30, though...
Perhaps the 40$ requirement is a bit steep... Still, the TGV is not that expensive....
[Note: I am well aware that Google Maps gives the distance for cars, but let's just ignore that for the sake of it]
A process is the user running it, huh...that doesn't make sense on the desktop.
I do not agree with that assertion. It makes perfect sense to me. However, that doesn't matter: you do not offer an alternative. Sand-boxed everything? That's going to be a greater horror than UAC in Vista....
You haven't tried hard enough. I've been running XP Pro for years using a Limited User account and rarely logging into Admin.
The trick is to do torough testing after installing applications. If something goes wrong, give RW access on the folder of the application. Fixes 98% of all applications. If that isn't enough, give it RW to its registry subtree. That fixes 1% of the other applications. You could really be unlucky and fall into one of the remaining 1% of applications, but up until now I only found one and it was a computer game. It does, however, work with RunAs.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly... I never bothered setting it up for piracy/emulation purposes either. I have 7 or 8 games, legally bought... Played them for hours.
Alas, my PSP was involved in an accident with a liquid and doesn't work anymore. I still haven't replaced it, and hope it will be one day < 100€ so that I can play the games I have again. For the moment, I just wait....
A bit offtopic, but... Indeed... I never got that people had problem with SCSI termination. I found PATA much more complicated. Master/Slave? Huh? With SCSI it's dead-simple. Just consider it a tube, and it needs to be closed on both sides or water will come out... *grin*
I was mostly kidding... It's a dragon, not really a label.
Hahaha... That would actually be funny....
I have one tattooed on my leg, but it's aftermarket :-P
Yes, and as a kid I once stepped on a rusty nail. Went right through the schoes sole... Wasn't pretty either...
Now see, this proves there must be a Designer! ;-)
/me runs and hides!
Yes, and? It's not as if I didn't actually know that. There are also BMW X-series (Not X5, or X3... you can get a 320X for example), Subaru has a few. I just listed those I am familiar with.
Audi A3 Quattro, Audi TT Quattro, VW Golf 4motion, Seat Leon 4, Skoda Felicia 4x4
Yes, I now those are all Haldex systems and not permanent all wheel drive, but I have one of the cars mentioned above and it works perfectly fine on snow. Where SUVs give in, I pass...
Now, not talking about modern cars, but when I was in Tuscany last year, the Panda 4x4 was still ubiquitous.
Muscle mass as in body builders who have lots of muscles but no strength? I can understand the sentiment, but I was talking about a healthy lifestyle, not about looks.
No.... He said said that computers deteriorate.. The original post din't even mention transistors:
So if you state such a thing it must deteriorate in a measurable way for the end-user. That isn't exactly true. A component that starts to get flaky is by definition already defective. You get random crashes? You investigate. A computer component no working within specs is broken.
I'm not contesting transistors deteriorate, but I am contesting that this has a real effect on the end-user experience. I have several consumer-end computer over 7 years old that work perfectly fine. That 24/7.... 7 years is pretty much "old" for a computer, even for Macs (from which this discussion originated) Sure, if the transistor decay makes my hardware unusable in 45 years... does it really matter?
It simply is not the same as saying "computers deteriorate". If this had any real effect at all (except for dying components) this stuff would be published all over the place. It simply is not relevant for the end-user.
Oh, I know the Thalys.... I've already taken the Eurostar, TGV-Est, etc... It's all the TGV, unless you're in Germany where I did take the ICE (which is great too)
I'm not saying anything you didn't say. I was just saying that the case Amsterdam-Marseilles isn't realistic. My main point for talking about that line is to give a perspective to the US readers. They always think that everything here is close together. I mean, eveyone knows Paris is next to Amsterdam, right?
Brussels - Paris is not something an American thinks of as far. They'd that to go watch a movie... For the record: for me Paris still is 2h30, but that's because I don't live in Brussels. Look up TGV Est ;-) Before the TGV it was 5 hours train or so...
Well, that's pretty much what I thought. It simply breaks. That's fine with me, but the person actually asserted that the hardware became slower and that was highly suspicious to me.
What are the timeframes of this happening? Within the lifespan of a typical computer? That a 10 year old computer eventually fails is to be expected. Now, a 1 year old failing due to degradation would be a outrage.
Aaaagh.... Chicago/Philly/NY should be Chicago/Pittsburgh/NY. Sorry, don't know what I was thinking.
Geographically it would make most sense to connect it to the east-coast network. I checked: NY to Chicago is about 1300km. That's pretty much the same as Amsterdam to Marseilles (You'd have to take two TGVs to do that because Paris is the centre of everything "TGV", but you can do it...) Amsterdam to Marseilles would take 8 hours, so at that point I'd rather advocate taking the plane. Perhaps Chicago/Philly/NY makes more sense?
Yes, the not-in-my-backyard phenomenon. I actually live close to a railroad trackand it really isn't as bad as you make it out to be. That said, most trains here are electric (but I wouldn't know for freight trains...) I wonder what danger.... I'd expect the tracks to be fenced off in populated areas, just like highways are fenced off. (At least, here they are...)
However the NIBY problem arises here too. I live in the region that is serviced by the TGV Est and the track was replanned several times because of this. I do have to admit that getting to Paris in pretty much 2h30 is an insane luxury. If I'm inclined to, I could leave at 8h00 and have a coffee at the Champs Elyées at 11h00, then have lunch at a Bistro, go shop a bit a Galleries Lafayette and be home in time for dinner. *grin*
That's what I can pretty much interpret from the comments around here. I think that political will has to be shown and actually "just do it" and not look at the financial aspects too early. The system doesn't have to make money, it just has to be able to sustain itself. However, that's too "socialist" and would be political suicide if a politician would stand behind it.
I have taken that train.... It takes quite long to load and unload and probably is quite a logistic challenge. The reason they do this is because they don't want people driving in th Eurotunnel.... So it's trains-only.
Madrid train bombings? We still can board trains free of checks....
Well, there is one exception to that: the only place where I've been checked when boarding a train was in Brussels and London when I took the Eurostar. I can somehow understand that, because if some smartass does detonate something within the Eurotunnel it's not going to be pretty.
Oh, you're not being a dick. My problem was not with the assertion that your cities are far apart and I most certainly wouldn't advocate a a train connection between LA and NY. Taking the plane for such things is absolutely acceptable and I wouldn't even think of saying that a Faro-Helsinki traveller should take the train.
My problem is that I always hear that "the US is frigging huge" and do as if Europe isn't much larger than a medium sized of your states. It isn't, Europe is also large. About the cities: yes... they're pretty close in the middle if you only think of places like Paris, London, Brussels, Amsterdam. However, if you start taking into account places like Warsaw, Vienna... heck even Rome isn't very close. I would consider Seattle close to LA, but it's exactly in the same ballpark as London to Vienna.
The geographical topology of the US is radically different from Europe (You're pretty much a big landmass, and you can look at Europe as a kind of large peninsula)
What would make sense, however, is developing a rail system to interconnect the large cities on the west coat, and another one on the east coast. Make sure that airports are directly connected to these two train networks and you have the benefits of high speed inter-city train connections and the benefits of air travel for large distances.
Actually, you're going to laugh, but my former job pretty much was next to a railroad station. From my home it's a 10-15min walk to the train station. It was actually faster than taking the car. My current job is similar, but it's with buses: a bus stop is at 2 minutes from my home and oddly there is a bus stop at 2 minutes from my office. Frequency of buses is every 20minutes, frequency of trains every hour (more in peaks)
So, yes, usually it's just walking + bus/train.
The sweating is greatly reduced because you're actually doing the walking every day and you're getting used to it. Now granted, I don't work in a suit which would indeed be more uncomfortable. In high summer, I just wear a tshirt (and pants, I promise, I wear pants *grin*). Besides, nobody actually prevents you from taking a fresh tshirt (which is what I did when I occasionally biked to work)
The thing is, where I live (Europe), if you live pretty close to the closest city, you usually have good connections by bus or train. The buses often even have their own lanes and get faster through morning/evening traffic because of that. If you live in a small village, it gets harder but it is possible. Most small villages have a bus going through it at the typical worktimes. A couple in the morning, a couple in the evening. Another alternative for many people is to drive to the closest train station and take the train to the city. The parking next to the train stations are free and you burn less gas. Parking in the city is expensive (think 10€/day if you're lucky, but I don't know for sure, I haven't paid for parking for a whole day in ages)
You go to a gym/shop on the route between your work and home? Besides, if you actually do the walking, you won't need a gym. The trick with going grocery shopping is simple: take one large bag and buy foodstuff for one or two days. The shopping frequency is greater, but your shopping time is reduced (you need few things) and you eat fresher fruits/vegetables. Also, instead of just going to a big mall, you stop at the local butcher, the local bakery... all by foot.
It is entirely possible... Hey, I even have a supermarket reachable by foot... There are even sidewalks *grin* and the bus stops pretty much in front of it. So, going home, I get off a few bus stops earlier, do my shopping and walk home.
The thing is that you have to start thinking differently: if you take the car, the world revolves around your schedule. That is not true anymore when you take public transportation: Instead, you need to plan a bit more carefully. Your workday, really becomes an 8h workday because, hey, you're going to miss the bus if you're still there late. The other aspect is that the infrastructure must be there (and it isn't in most of the US). I think the two are linked, because the US way of life/thinking is very "ego-centered" and this means your own transportation, and hence public transportation is seen as something undesirable and is thus not funded.
Hope that replied your "honest question"....
Not too long ago I saw a documentary on Robert J. White and related "experiments". I don't know if it was him or one of the Russians with similar projects, but they actually kept a monkey brain alive outside the head. Yes, there was video footage...
You guys keep asserting this....
Figures pulled from Google Maps...
Yes, the US is huge.... However, Europe isn't exctly small....
Let's compare this a bit. According to Google maps NYC to WDC is 365km. I wanted something close in the TGV network, so Paris to Metz seems to fit quite nicely with 332km.
According to tgv.fr, I can get the trip Paris Metz for a bit less than 60€. I does only take 1h30, though...
Perhaps the 40$ requirement is a bit steep... Still, the TGV is not that expensive....
[Note: I am well aware that Google Maps gives the distance for cars, but let's just ignore that for the sake of it]
I do not agree with that assertion. It makes perfect sense to me. However, that doesn't matter: you do not offer an alternative. Sand-boxed everything? That's going to be a greater horror than UAC in Vista....
You haven't tried hard enough. I've been running XP Pro for years using a Limited User account and rarely logging into Admin.
The trick is to do torough testing after installing applications. If something goes wrong, give RW access on the folder of the application. Fixes 98% of all applications. If that isn't enough, give it RW to its registry subtree. That fixes 1% of the other applications. You could really be unlucky and fall into one of the remaining 1% of applications, but up until now I only found one and it was a computer game. It does, however, work with RunAs.
If Microsoft wouldn't have been so stupid to actually remove the ACL interface from Win XP Home, it would have been possible to do this easier.